Empire

admitted is a fault mitigated-unfair. For instance, there is something about Mrs. Astor that annoys me, possibly because we’re all good Democrats, aren’t we? Well, the jewels that she wears in just one evening could rebuild the thousand and one Astor tenements that paid for them.”

“The Colonel’s turned socialist.” Blaise had not yet learned how to turn social disgust to fascinated rapture. Caroline had been well taught by Mlle. Souvestre.

“No, my boy. I simply voted the way the Journal told me to vote, for Bryan.” He took a pinch of snuff from a silver box. “Have I your permission, Miss Sanford?”

“Of course! How nice to know one another without being introduced. Versailles must have been just like… Rector’s.”

“God,” said Blaise to the oysters that had just arrived.

“You will live here, I hope?”

Caroline nodded. “It is the city of the future, and so perfect for someone like me who has no past, as you know best of all.”

“Oh, the Saunterer is not that much of an ogre. Believe me. You must get on with supper.” He rose, as champagne arrived, a present from Mr. Rector. “Mr. Houghteling tells me that everything is going nicely now, which is plain,” he spread his hands as if to embrace the young couple, “to even my Saunterer’s eyes!” Colonel Mann moved on to the next room, and the men’s bar.

“He’s a monster. How can you talk to him like that?”

“I’m fascinated by monsters. How does he find out things? You know, dark secrets?”

Blaise toasted the air; and drank. Caroline satisfied herself with a single sip: this was not a time to be unalert. “He bribes servants mostly, and he pays people like Harry Lehr to give him gossip. They say he has a safe which is full-up with the dirt on everyone famous in the town.”

“Break into it!”

“What?” Blaise stared at her, as dumbly as his sharp features could allow.

“Well, wouldn’t that be a coup for the Chief? To publish the contents of Colonel Mann’s safe.”

“They might really run him out of town, if he did that.” Thus announced, the Chief himself appeared, with two young girls; all three in evening dress. Blaise introduced Caroline to Mr. Hearst, and the two Misses Willson. Hearst’s presence at Rector’s caused considerable excitement. Admirers shook his hand; detractors turned away. The Chief stared intently at Caroline and then, as the orchestra, this time in Hearst’s honor, began to play “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” he said, in an odd thin voice, “Would you like to see me put the Journal to bed?”

“I thought the Journal never slept…”

“It goes to bed when they make it up, the front page, for the last time before they print.” Blaise was helpful.

Hearst was forceful. “Come on,” said the Chief. The Misses Willson continued to smile in unison. Hearst took Caroline’s arm, most politely. “Miss Sanford,” he said. She looked up at him; he was well over six feet tall. Caroline smiled; and understood why her brother found Hearst so exciting: he was one of those rare creatures who make, as Mlle. Souvestre would say, the weather.

A perilous old elevator, operated by an ancient Negro, took them to the second floor of the Tribune Building, where several men were still at work in a long ink-smelling room, rather like a livery stable except that instead of bridles and saddles attached to walls or mounted on sawhorses, there were long sheets of galley paper, drawings, photographs. The overhead electric light bulbs on their cords swayed whenever a heavy wagon made its way along Park Lane. The editor, Willis Abbott, both dapper and deeply weary, presided over a mock-up of the front page, whose principal headline advised the reader that President McKinley was to make a major address on the Philippines, in St. Louis.

“Oh, no,” said Hearst mildly. “Unless we can tell them something they don’t know-like he’s going to annex the whole place, or burn down Manila…”

“A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” sounded, unbidden, in Caroline’s head. With both amusement and awe, she watched as Hearst put a number of strips of text and squares of illustration on the floor and then got down on his knees and, like a child happy with a puzzle, began to create-no other word-the next day’s news. But news was not the right word. This was not news but entertainment for the masses. A murder at the bottom of the page began, inexorably, to move higher and higher up the page. A drawing of the murdered woman, idealized to a Madonna-esque purity, found its way to the page’s center while the President sank to the page’s bottom, and a statement by Secretary of State Hay moved to the third page. During this, the Willson girls practiced a new dance step at the far end of the room beneath a large drawing of the Yellow Kid, a cartoonist’s invention for the World which Hearst had appropriated for the Journal (along with the cartoonist), causing the aggrieved Mr. Pulitzer to engage a new creator of Yellow Kids and, in the process, giving the generic word “yellow” to popular journalism.

“The Chief’s amazing,” Blaise murmured in Caroline’s ear. “He’s like a painter.”

“But is it always murder first?” Caroline’s voice was low, but Hearst, now on all fours, heard her. “Rape’s better,” he said, “if you’ll forgive the word.”

The Willson girls shrieked with delight. Hearst received an enlarged headline from a copy-boy: “Murdered Woman Found!” He placed it above the Madonna face. “We also like a good fire.”

“And a good war,” said Mr. Abbott dutifully.

“Look,” said Blaise. On the wall opposite, beneath an American flag, the huge headline “Journal’s War Won!”

“Your war, Mr. Hearst?”

“Pretty much, Miss Sanford. McKinley and Hanna weren’t ever going to fight. So we got the war going so they’d have to…” Hearst sat on his heels, a strand of blond dull hair in one eye. “Mr. Abbott, wasn’t the murdered woman found nude?”

“Actually, no, Chief. She was wearing a sort of gingham dress…”

“Well, make that a slip… a torn slip.” Hearst smiled up at Caroline. “I hope this doesn’t shock you.”

“No. Blaise has prepared me.”

“Blaise has got a real knack for this.” The great man then started in on page two, with running commentary to Abbott, mostly asking for more pictures and large headlines; also, “We’re giving too much space to that dude Roosevelt. Remember. We’re for Van Wyck. And sound government, and all that.”

“You mean Tammany, Chief?” Abbott smiled.

“Platt’s better than Tammany any day. But Van Wyck’s our crook. Roosevelt’s theirs. But we’ll clean up this city one of these days.”

“Reform?” asked Caroline, who knew in theory what the word meant; knew, in practice, what it meant when applied to New York City’s politics; knew nothing of what the word meant to Hearst.

“Yes, Miss Sanford. The whole country, too. Bryan’s hopeless. McKinley’s just a front for old moneybags Hanna.” Hearst stood up. On the floor, his masterpiece: the front page for the next morning’s edition of the New York Journal. “So we need somebody new, clean.”

“That’s what they say Roosevelt is.” Blaise was cautious.

“He’s Platt’s candidate. How can Platt be reformed? Anyway, he’s going to lose. Mr. Abbott.” Hearst turned to the editor just as that more than ever weary figure was presenting the intricate mosaic of the front page to the printer.

“Yes, Chief.”

“I’ve decided on our next president.” Even the Willson girls stopped dancing when they heard this. Everyone looked very solemn; even Caroline was impressed.

“Yes, Chief?” The editor was imperturbable. “Who?”

“Admiral Dewey. Hero of Manila. ‘You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.’ That’s as good as ‘Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes.’ ”

“But did Admiral Dewey really say those-those inspiring words?” Caroline was now caught up in the excitement of inventing history, not to mention of creating presidents.

“Well, we said he said it, and I suppose he probably did say something like it. Anyway, he hasn’t denied it, and that’s what matters. Besides, he beat the Spaniards and got us Manila. Do you know him?” Although Hearst was